Captured

Just yesterday, while driving on a short trip with the family, my daughter and I snapped pictures along the way.  I want so much to share with my friends and family in the states exactly WHY and HOW this country has captured my heart.  I don't know if these photos will communicate that but I hope they will give you some sense of the life we live and the scenes we see every day.

I hope you will see this is a beautiful place.  At times, we see things that haunt us.  At other times, we see things that make us grateful to have been called here.

We observe the lives people are living and the struggles they have.  We see them celebrating their families and sometimes, simply trying to earn money for rent and food.

We notice that people, in general, all want the same things: safety, comforts, provision for themselves and their families, dignity, purpose, to be noticed and to be respected.

I love it here. I pray we never have to leave.  How else to explain what I know except to say "we belong here"?  We do. We know this.

Here is a look at our part of The Philippines, our home, through our camera lens.

Enjoy!

An obvious play on the "Wal Mart" name. It's a store with a little bit of everything.

Some young men hanging out by a creek that is swollen from the recent tropical storm

A little boy walking quickly to . . . wherever he's going.

The home here is a shack but notice the motorcycles and clean laundry outside.

The irony of this photo is, the people who built shacks on this land are undoubtedly squatters and therefore, trespassing! You see this everywhere here.

A typical home that is very close to the busy, main road.

These goats were walking freely down the street, careful to stay on the sidewalk as traffic went by.

The Manila skyline. Notice the community under the bridge? They have made it their home.

Men at work

Another community by the river.

Again, the Manila skyline and the vast squatter shacks that are in it's shadow.

A home by the dump. We see people going through the trash (many children) as we drive by. It is how some survive. Finding things to recycle.

A fruit stand off the highway. The fruit here is absolutely amazing! Mangoes, pineapples, bananas . . . so GOOD!!!

These girls were petting this pig in front of a house as we came by. It will probably be lechon later . . . ha ha . . .

A local outreach for street kids that has been good enough to let us participate. They are building wonderful leaders out of their older kids.

Kuya Ariel holding Zeke as the kids from outreach wait for Mr. Anthony to drive them home in the rain. Such an honor to serve them, even in this small way. 

 

And what more can I say?  We are getting to know our home, enjoying some of the local ministries already up and running and learning from them as we prepare to launch The Bartimaeus Project fully here.   We know there will be no shortage of needs to address. The hard part is seeking God about exactly where we fit and doing those things well - not trying to spread ourselves too thin and becoming ineffectual by diluting our efforts.  
 Prayer Needs:
Door are opening and we are prayerfully walking through them. 
We covet your prayers and we prepare to invite the children who need us into our lives.  We ask you to pray that we serve with excellence, that we keep the fire, that we communicate clearly the love of Jesus and that we not grow weary.    We ask you to lift up, in your prayers, an upcoming fundraiser for The Bartimaeus Project that will take place in the states (details will be shared soon). 
Most of all, we ask that you pray that our whole family is able to lift up the name of Jesus in all we do. This is so much more about HIM than it is about us and we want to make HIS name great among the people we meet.
More of Him, less of us!
Thank you, friends.

Everywhere I Go

 Today, Wednesday, July 31st, marks THREE WEEKS since we turned the key on our new home and started living in The Philippines.  We allowed ourselves two or three days for jet lag and then began to get to work securing the licensing that will allow us to freely work with any child through The Bartimaeus Project.
We are very close to having that license!  We have children lined up and waiting to be evaluated and loved on.  How eager we are to get started!
In the meantime, we are spending our days getting to know this place we call home.  We have driven to the far corners of Luzon and been lost more than once.
We have taken buses, jeepneys and trikes as we get to know our close-by places.
And every place we go, every day, we are confronted with the poverty that earned this beautiful country the status "third world".

I am always uncertain as to how much to post and what pictures would be appropriate for this blog.  This is a country and a people of great dignity.  But I have seen horrible things and I want to share them with you because it is vital to your understanding of the answer to the question  "why can't you stay and help the poor in the United States?".
Yes, we DO have poor people in America.  Maybe even a few who actually starve due to lack of access to food or clean drinking water.

But not like this.

The streets in my town are lined with squatters.  The squatters are virtually homeless people who have make houses out of tarp, plywood, metal and garbage.  You can see them lining the Pasig River in the picture below if you enlarge it.

The squatter villages are full of children.   I have seen naked children playing within a foot of the busy street.
I have had beautiful children see my white face and hold out a hand to beg for a few pesos.
I have seen mothers carrying children who look very frail and sick. Walking down the street with hollow eyes, no hope to be seen.

And I don't have to go anywhere special to see this scene.   On the way to the grocery store, they are there.

Outside the restaurants where my family dines, they wait to ask for help

 And I say to myself "oh, we are here to help visually-impaired orphans. We aren't here for THIS kind of ministry."
But my heart is always prodded by that still small voice saying "whatever you have done for the least of these, you have done for ME."

And I say I would do ANYTHING for HIM.  And here "HE" is.  In the form of a dirty child holding out his hand.
In the face of a mother who's baby clearly has pink eye left untreated.  Looking just like a bone-thin old man coughing his lungs out on a crowded jeep, making me recoil just a bit as I think about tuberculosis.

Yes, we have poor in the United States.  but not like these . . .

Lord, teach us to serve and love and be your hands and feet.  Let us not confine ourselves to only doing what feels comfortable but let us love with reckless abandon.  For the time is short.   Let us not count the cost.

TEACH US TO LOVE.